Since my employment with the Boy Scouts of America began over a year ago, the training I have received in BSU’s EdTech program has opened doors for developing and maintaining online resources for our local council and the district I supervise. These resources are primarily used to disseminate information, promote involvement, and facilitate the work of teams within our organization.

I was not the original creator of srcouncil.org, but I have, for the past year, maintained the majority of its content and carried out or consulted with colleagues on the changes made to the structure of the website. Once my supervisor learned that I had a basic understanding of HTML/CSS and other Web 2.0 technologies, such as setting up and maintaining a blog platform and building a network of online sharing tools, I was assigned responsibility for updating content and improving the resourcefulness of the council website. In the process of fulfilling this responsibility, I have collaborated with and led my colleagues in establishing new processes and protocols for using the website and its resources.

The hosting for the council’s website is maintained by a local publishing company that supports the BSA and is managed with Joomla 1.5. The webmaster in the publishing company maintains the server, sets up short links on the server, backups the website data, and advises me on technical issues. I now administer virtually all of the work done within the Joomla platform and other Web 2.0 platforms tied into our website. I train my colleagues and supervisor on the use of these resources and consult with the team on the development of protocols and processes for each executive who contributes to the site.

The council’s Facebook page was also set up before I arrived at the council, but I have taken responsibility for maintaining it’s content. Since I have taken over the Facebook page, our number of likes has steadily grown. I set up the Order of the Arrow (OA) lodge’s Facebook page and various district Facebook pages and have exclusively maintained the content and promoted the OA and Sawtooth pages. I have worked to set these up as hubs in our efforts to network with Scout leaders and youth members in these various organizations.

At the request of a colleague to find a better way to share flyers and other publications generated by members of the executive staff and by event chairs, I set up a Dropbox account for the council and helped each executive and member of the council support staff download the Dropbox application to their system tray. I provided training on how to use the Dropbox application and consulted with interested colleagues in setting up protocols for naming and structuring folder content.

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Photographers license their work. Some of my photos are copyright protected and may not be downloaded or used in any way (all rights reserved). Other pictures, however, are available for you to use under a Creative Commons attribution license. Any of my pictures tagged with CC BY 4.0 Int. are free for you to use in accordance with the terms of the CC attribution license. The conditions of an attribution license are very simple (click the image below for more information about this license). A CC license is not the same thing as releasing a picture into the public domain. I have not chosen to release my pictures into the public domain.